Naxi Hieroglyphic Script

Author: Fang Guoyu
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-12-01
Features: The Naxi hieroglyphic script has about 2,200 characters, with strong pictographic features. Each character represents an object, an event, or an idea. Unlike pictorial scripts that aesthetic beauty through lifelike depictions, this script uses simple strokes to outline the contours of objects, events, or ideas. It must be simple yet distinct from one another. Various methods of character creation are employed, such as classifying by type, highlighting distinctive features, altering the original form, and associating sounds with events. Sentences written in this hieroglyphic script often resemble a picture, serving merely as prompts with no fixed pronunciation. As a result, even if someone speaks Naxi and recognizes individual hieroglyphs, they cannot understand the text of the Dagon scriptures. Only Dagon priests who have studied under masters since childhood can read the scriptures aloud while looking at the text. This script has a history of about 1,000 years. Naxi Dagon priests have written approximately 1,500 volumes of scriptures in this hieroglyphic script, making it an important treasure for studying Naxi language and script, social history, religious philosophy, astronomy and geography, as well as literature and art. Since this century, scholars both domestically and internationally have published many works on Naxi hieroglyphic script. Among them, the most famous include Mr. Li Lincan's Dictionary of Mohe Hieroglyphic Script, Mohe Phonetic Script Dictionary, and Nine Translations and Annotations of Mohe Classics, Mr. Fu Mao's Research on the Ancient Records of Mohe Hieroglyphic Script in Lijiang, Research on the Naxi Pictographic Script The Legend of the White Bat's Journey to India, and the Naxi-English Encyclopedic Dictionary by American Joseph Rock. Especially noteworthy is the Naxi Hieroglyphic Script Spectrum compiled by Naxi scholar Fang Guoyu and revised by He Zhifu, which has reached a high academic level. In the 1960s, the Lijiang County Cultural Center and the Dongba Culture Research Office of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, established in recent years, have recruited famous Dagon priests to translate a large number of Dagon scriptures. The Naxi also have a phonetic script with over 2,400 symbols, most of which are repeated variant characters, with about 500 commonly used ones. This script is also mastered only by Dagon priests, and only a small number of Dagon scriptures are written in phonetic characters.